When the reports began about a year ago that Vince McMahon was working on bringing back the XFL, the defunct league that he once called a colossal failure, I was confused.

When the league’s re-creation was officially announced last January, confusion was still the overriding sentiment. McMahon, sounding like he had just smoked a carton of cigarettes and then chewed some nails, explained that this new version of the XFL would be nothing like the old one, that it would be “football reimagined,” and that they would soon be doing all that reimagining and would let us know what comes of it.

And now, 10 months after that, with the XFL on Wednesday announcing its inaugural eight cities and stadiums, here is my update: still pretty confused.

While the league is now filling out some of the details on its plans and schedules, the great unanswered question remains: is there really much of a desire for any of this? And while Wednesday’s announcements included repeated references to the strong demand for football in the United States, the XFL has been beaten to the starting gate by the Alliance of American Football, another upstart spring league that will begin play this coming February, a year ahead of the reanimated corpse of the XFL. Is this alleged unsatisfied demand for off-season pro football strong enough to support two nascent leagues?

Whatever the answers to those questions might prove to be, there’s a more important one for football fans on this side of the border: what does all of this mean for the Canadian Football League?

We’ll come to the CFL part in a bit. First, what was learned about the XFL on Wednesday: Four of the teams — New York, Seattle, Tampa Bay and St. Louis — will play in stadiums that either house an NFL team or recently housed one. Dallas will play in the Texas Rangers’ ballpark, because they need a tenant for it now that the Rangers are getting another new stadium. Houston will play at the University of Houston’s stadium, Washington will play at the new home of the MLS’ DC United, and Los Angeles will play at the StubHub Center, the soccer stadium that temporarily houses the L.A. Chargers and thousands of fans of whichever team is playing them.

Commissioner Oliver Luck said teams will start signing players in the “first quarter” of next year and the league will hold a draft sometime next fall. The eight teams will play 10-game schedules, meaning the whole thing will be wrapped up before May. The XFL expects to have 40-man rosters, with players making US$75,000 per year.

As for the reimagination of football? They are still working on that. Luck said a big focus will be on a faster-moving game, with fewer breaks in play, fewer timeouts and fewer TV timeouts. “Less stall, more ball,” he said, proving again that people will proudly invent dumb slogans as long as they rhyme. Luck also said they think they can deliver a game experience that lasts less than three hours. That is … not dramatically shorter than a typical NFL game.

Vince McMahon speaks about the XFL in 2000. The upstart football league is set to make a comeback.Ed Bailey/AP, File

The commissioner also said that he expects most of the players to come from the large pool of guys who can’t stick on an NFL roster. When NFL teams make their final cuts in the fall, he said, about 900 football players are suddenly on the market.

Some of those players have filtered up to the CFL in the past. And that’s the uncertainty for the Canadian league: will a revived XFL drain some of the talent pool for it? It is easy at this point to wave off the XFL as the wild idea of a rich man, especially when it keeps talking about innovations without actually saying what they are, but it aims to employ a lot of football players. Coupled with the 50-man rosters of the eight-team AAF, that’s 900 players who could sign with one of the two spring leagues over the coming two seasons. The AAF is also promising a first-year salary of US$75,000, which is close to double the value of the CFL’s minimum salary of $54,000. It’s not hard to imagine a scenario where American players opt to take more money from one of the spring leagues, play fewer games, and stay at home, than come north for a CFL job that will run into the NFL season. The CFL has history, infrastructure, established teams and fan bases, all of which make it attractive to someone who wants to get paid to play football. The upstart leagues could easily follow the path of their various predecessors, which is to say straight to oblivion. But McMahon’s XFL is said to be buttressed by US$100-milllion of his own money, and Luck said it is funded for a five-year plan that will give it time to grow. The AAF lacks the wrestling impresario’s financial clout, but a host of NFL-experienced coaches have signed up: Steve Spurrier, Mike Martz, Mike Singletary, Brad Childress.

These leagues have gone from vague ideas to actual things in a short time. This is why the leaders of the CFL players association were, during Grey Cup week, none-too-subtly referring to the changing landscape of pro football when they were discussing upcoming negotiations on a new collective bargaining agreement. They feel they have some leverage.

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